Revealed: Twelve Useless Wind Turbines

Earlier this month, Breitbart Londonreported that a Welsh government office was to scrap its £50,000 wind turbine after it generated just £5 of electricity per month. It now turns out that this is not the only place small-scale wind-turbine to have proved completely pointless.

Here is a list (courtesy of Not a Lot of People Know That) of 12 other local authorities wasting money on turbines that have proved to be next-to-useless.

1. Dover

A £90,000 wind turbine install outside council offices has generated just a tenth of the energy intended. The turbine was supposed to generate 45,000 kW hours per year, but has actually produced less than 4,500 kWhrs/year. This means that the turbine won’t pay for itself for 133 years, assuming there are no interest charges of maintenance costs.

2. Derby

As previously reported on Breitbart London, two turbines have yet to produce any power despite being ready since December, as they interfere with the radar at a nearby airport. They won’t be switched on until new radar equipment is installed, at great cost.

3. Milton Keynes

Three wind turbines built on the grounds of a school are being dismantled after allegedly generating just £3.67 worth of electricity in nine years. Milton Keynes council spent £170,000 for the turbines, but they were switched off for health and safety reasons shortly after the school opened in 2005. The company that made them has also gone into liquidation, meaning the council can’t claim compensation.

4. Hinckley

A £40,000 wind turbine at North Warwickshire and Hinckley College has been branded a “disaster” after it consumed more energy than it generated. It has also only turned eight percent of time during its three-year lifespan, and used up enough energy to power a household for two years.

5. Canada

Several rinks on Prince Edward Island are trying to get rid of their wind turbines after they never saw the savings they were promised. Tom Albrecht, vice-president of the South Shore Actiplex said: “We went into debt to purchase this windmill on the promise that it would make us money and it would help us with our power costs. The bottom line is buy us out and give us our money back.”

6. Whitfield

The local council in Whitfield, Kent have scrapped a turbine installed in 2007 after it developed a fault. The company that supplied the turbine has ceased trading, meaning that the council could not source supplies for repairs.

7. Huddersfield

Huddersfield council are to take two turbines down from the roof of the Civic Centre after just five years. The turbines cost £100,000 to install, but one has been broken for the past 16 months. In 2008, the turbines earned £2,078 for the council, but cost £6,431 to maintain.

8. Wotton

A school in the town of Wotton has been forced to remove its wind turbine after receiving a noise abatement notice. Stroud District Council’s environmental health officer said: “As soon as it was operational, it was giving out unacceptable levels of noise at quite a lot of dwellings nearby, as well as some quite far away.” After numerous physical changes to the turbine failed to make any difference, the school decided to take it down.

9. Exeter

Exeter City Council spent £5,000 putting three wind turbines on the roof of the civic centre, but it could take up to 50 years for the turbine to recoup the cost in savings, even though the average lifespan of a turbine is 20-25 years.

10. Greenock

Inverclyde Academy were reported in 2011 to be ready to scrap a wind turbine installed just three years previously. The turbine was supposed to generate 15 to 15 percent of the school’s power but hasn’t generated any energy for over a year. Like others across the country, it developed various faults and its manufacturer has not gone bust.

11. Portland

A £20,000 wind turbine installed at a school had to be turned off because it killed too many sea birds. In the space of a few months, the blades killed 14 birds, far more than the one-per-year predicted by the manufacturers.

12. Climping, West Sussex

A wind turbine had to be removed from a local school had to be removed after generating too little power. It was put up in 2005 as part of an experiment to see if local coastal winds would make it sustainable, but the experiment failed. Savings of £550 from April 2011 to March 2012 were not enough to cover maintenance costs.